Various seating apparatuses exist in the art for a variety of applications. These include the common four-legged chair found at dinner tables throughout the world, folding chairs such as portable “beach chairs” that must be folded and unfolded manually, as well as automatically folding chairs such as the “theater chairs” found in movie theaters and opera houses. With respect to the latter, that is chairs that are pivotally coupled at the rear of their seating surface to deploy or unfold when an occupant load is applied, and fold when the load is removed.
But, “theater chairs” are intentionally designed to not have four legs. That is, they specifically lack front legs, for many reasons. These reasons include the severe space constraints of where such chairs are typically installed (theater/auditorium seating rows), the added design complexity adding four legs would cause, cost and others. Yet the lack of four legs in “theater style” chairs limit the occupant load such chairs can accommodate.
In particular, such (theater style) chairs are not adapted to handle “impulse” type loads, such as what would occur if an occupant were to fall into the chair with their full body weight and momentum. The impulse force would create a moment of inertia and severe angular momentum about the seating surface's pivot point, which when it comes to the extent of its travel will create a severe impulse torque at the point and likely damage the seating apparatus. But, impulse loads are not typically encountered in theater environments, and thus (previously mentioned reasons why “theater chairs” do not have additional legs notwithstanding), “theater style” chairs continue to lack a suitable means for dealing with the aforementioned impulse forces, should they be encountered.